Third Time's the Charm
by Archea
Summary: Enjolras, Combeferre and Platonic kisses. Mention of the other amis and Gavroche. PG, written to fill an E/C prompt on the les mis kinkmeme.
1. Chapter 1

**Third Time's the Charm**

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a Jesuit school in possession of two hundred young bloods on the cusp of manhood must be in want of healthy distractions.

"It could be worse," Brother Eugène told Brother Jacquelin as they sat down to business in a flurry of black robes. "Over at Saint-Elme, I've heard, they're handing out _footballs_. On the Lord's day, too."

"So typical of the Dominicans." Brother Jacquelin crossed himself, either out of contrition for the deadly sin of pride or as a quickie exorcism for the outrageous football. "It's all _corpore sano_ with these people, intellect is a dead cause to them. No wonder their boys can't hold their own when it comes to Rhetoric."

"Hollo, holla!" The cheerful voice of their Principal and commander-in-chief could be heard bouncing against the stone walls as he walked up the corridor. "Have I just heard Brother Jacquelin utter the R-word? Then you two must be in medias res. Well, brothers, here I am, ready to hear all about this year's casting. I suppose we're doing the Infant Jesus Found at the Temple?"

"When are we _not_ doing the Infant Jesus Found at the Temple," Brother Eugène muttered under his breath. He was in charge of costumes, and having to sew up new camel suits every year for the younger and breeziers actors had soured his otherwise beatific temper.

"An excellent exercise for fifteen-year olds," came the heated reply. "It doesn't overtax their memories since they can debate ad lib, provides speaking parts for the bolder elements and pantomime for the blushers, and stimulates competition for the leading parts."

"Not that there's any doubt as to who will be our young Lord this year. And look the part, too." The Principal's eyelids drooped in dreamy contemplation. "Golden curls to match his silver tongue..."

"And good luck for stopping _that_ once you hoist him on a stage," Brother Eugène grumbled on, unheeded.

"Cheeks in the pink of bloom..."

"Eyes as blue as Our Lady's cloak..."

Brother Eugène, by far the oldest in their council, gave a catarrhic little cough. "Speaking of which, have you decided who shall wear the cloak this year?"

The others' sighs collapsed into painful groans. Every year brought back the same quandary. Religious drama as such was a hit with the boys, especially when it included parades and animal parts. Not so much the female roles, which had been pared to the bone but could hardly exclude the Virgin Mary.

"Who's writing the parts?" the Principal asked. "Perhaps we can prevail on him to make the role more interesting..."

Brother Jacquelin lifted his hands in a non-committal gesture. "There's writing, and then there's good writing, and then there's Monsieur Prouvaire's Muse and her flower power. We'll be lucky if he doesn't turn the Temple into the Jardin des Plantes by the time he's done. Last time I saw him, he was looking for a rhyme for _geranium_."

"I don't think he appreciated my offer of _cranium_," Brother Eugène murmured.

"If we cast by the Rule, the Sainted Family goes to the top three in Rhetoric. That means Enjolras, Grantaire..."

"I'm _not_ casting Grantaire as the Holy Mary!" Brother Jacquelin's groan would have done the Miserere proud." One disaster a term quite fits the bill. Remember what happened when we let him greet the Bishop on prize-giving day?"

The Principal shuddered. "How he even managed to find cherry-brandy on these premises..."

"The Dominicans had a field day over this," Brother Eugène echoed somberly. "No, we need a zero-risk policy here. A gentle lad, soft-spoken, broad-minded, open to new experiences, a tender and serious spirit with a taste for theatre and a liberal approach to virility..."

The three Jesuits locked eyes almost in synch.

* * *

The play started off without a hitch. The pilgrims from Nazareth paraded up and down, the camels and asses gamboling on their heels until the Holy Family stopped at the steps of the Temple (an impressive scaffolding covered with about every red curtain that could be pilfered from the dormitories). Joseph helped Mary down from the donkey while everybody pretended not to notice that the Infant Jesus's blond head towered a good two inches over theirs. Or that Joseph's praise of Mary had grown quite flowery overnight, with an interesting cameo on "that dazzling, dying flush on your geranium cheek".

Whereupon Brother Jacquelin's keen eye caught young Grantaire collecting a few bets from the boys in his row. But none of them seemed to exceed twenty sous, and the Jesuit reminded himself of Saint Ignatius's admirable words about the divine wisdom of silence.

The Holy Family walked up the steps, the Doctors waved their scrolls of Scripture about, and the curtain fell on a belated camel jogging up after his peers and a round of applause. Since most of the parents had been invited to see their sons perform, Monsieur Enjolras Père, a leading merchant in the silk business and one of their wealthiest patrons, had been given a seat of honour to the right of the Archbishop. To his left sat Madame Enjolras in a profusion of lace and velvet that outdid even the Bishop's garb. All three were beaming, and Brother Jacquelin's soul pulsed with innocent pride as he walked round the improvised stage to cheer his charges.

In a haze of self-congratulation, he stepped out of the refectory-turned-proscenium to grant himself a pinch of snuff under cover of the pigeonhouse roof. The tobacco left him in such a relaxed state that he missed the curtain rise, and would have missed all of act II if a young Jesuit, panting and geranium-hued, had not run up to him.

"Brother, Brother ! You are wanted off-stage..."

Off-stage were Brother Eugène, Brother Macaire, Brother Saint-Sulpicien, Joseph, Mary, various pack animals whispering excitedly, Jehan Prouvaire with a quill stuck in his hair and, much to Jacquelin's surprise, a fuming Principal.

"A scandal!" the Principal was hissing. "Where on earth have you been? You are to stop this outrageous display at once!"

From the stage, young Enjolras's voice could be heard, its fluted treble laden with passionate vibrato. "The Law of the Lord is that all men on earth should have equal rights to lodging and food! Even now, children are persecuted by the Herods of hunger and illiteracy because the 1698 Ordinance on basic education..."

"Told you so," Brother Eugène muttered in grim satisfaction.

"Jesus!" Brother Jacquelin felt the sweat pearl on his balding crown and raised a trembling, black-clad arm to his brow. "He's sabotaging my play!"

"We'd better go softly-softly there," Brother Macaire warned. "Look at his parents!"

They looked at Monsieur and Madame Enjolras, both sporting ecstatic smiles at their son's vocal bravura. In fact, Monsieur's cane was drawing flourishes of approval in the air. The Archbishop, on the other hand, was slmost black in the face and only prevented from leaving by Madame's ruffled skirts, which had become entangled with his robes.

"Someone step out and _shut me that boy_!" the Principal spluttered while the Infant Jesus, pacing up and down the stage, tried to appeal to his audience's reformist fibre by snatching one of the dorm curtains and draping himself in it. The none-too-solid scaffoldings began to shake, and the Doctors squealed in terror.

Grantaire's voice rose from the audience. "Hey, Jesus! Wanna pull it down in less than three days?"

"This is a nightmare!" the Principal wailed. "I can't interfere without offending his parents, and I can't let this go on without alienating His Grandeur! Dear Lord! I swear I'll flog that young scamp within an inch of his life once I've caught him."

"I'll lend a hand," Brother Jacquelin offered darkly.

"No you won't," a quiet voice said, and the Virgin Mary – young Combeferre in a blue gown and veil – stepped up to them, his face a study in resolution. "I'll stop him now if you like, and the show will go on, but I want your word of honour that you won't punish him in any way. He is not trying to offend anyone; it's just his nature speaking out."

The Jesuits exchanged quick glances.

"All right, hurry up, go, switfly now," the Principal hissed back. "Before I lose the rest of my sanity and thrash your protégé on stage! And that goes for the two of you if you fail and he carries on with his – his – his carrying-ons."

"Oh, I won't," was the phlegmatic answer as Combeferre stepped onto the stage with a nod to Joseph to follow him. The others watched as he walked straight to the fair-haired soliloquist, never once stripping on his gown, and wrapped sudden arms around him.

"My child! Your father and I have been looking for you everywhere!"

The Infant Jesus opened his mouth for a new swoop of rhetorics, but Combeferre was swifter. He tucked Enjolras's head down and against his neck, bent his own and dropped a loud kiss on his friend's temple.

There was a moment's silence while everyone gazed at the scene, entranced. When it became clear that Enjolras was no longer speaking - was, in fact, averting his face, the camels rushed in again for the departure scene and Brother Jacquelin's voice concluded loudly and hastily: "And he told them he was going about his Father's business..."

"My Fatherland!" Enjolras protested, but he kept his gaze lowered as Combeferre grabbed his hand and pulled him off-stage.

"...and they all went home safely, amen! Which is more than you deserve, you poisonous little Danton," Brother Jacquelin added with a furious squint at his former prize pupil. "You're not getting the cross again any time soon, let me tell you."

"He won't misbehave again," Combeferre promised. "Not here, not unless he wants me to kiss him again."

"Judas," Enjolras growled, trying to disengage his hand.

But in the years to come, the years that would see so many children strain and ripen into manhood, the memory of that kiss stayed with them. It resurfaced in the long, feverish evenings, when Combeferre watched Enjolras burn his midnight oil at his desk, writing and rehearsing his speeches. Sometimes, when the last drop of oil had been consumed and Enjolras reeled with exhaustion, Combeferre would walk over to him and gather him in his arms, wordlessly, and kiss his cheek or forehead.

"Enough," he said quietly, and Enjolras, with half a smile and half a sigh, gave in to the touch. It was always one-sided and never spoken upon, but the kiss was a sign that they both heeded. Days were incandescent with the white fire of rhetoric, and nights were obscure, given over to rifle hunting and harsh tractations with tinkers, workers, soldiers, spies. But now and then, Combeferre wrapped his arms around him, and all it took for Enjolras to let himself be guided to his rest was the silent press of his friend's lips.

They kept the sign to themselves, even as the months went by and the burning went up.


	2. Chapter 2

"To our sleeping beauty," Jehan said in hushed happy tones, his chestnut head lolling against Courfeyrac's thigh. He looked at the barricade. They all did while they strived to obey Enjolras's resting orders for the next two hours, aware that sleep, like their magnum opus, would be a bric-a-brac affair at best.

"She's in for a hell of a kiss," was the coarser answer. Bahorel's neck was at odds with his feet, the latter trimly propped on a bit of sofa jutting out from the base of the pyramid, the former twisted in Bahorel's optimistic attempt to pillow it on his own clavicle. The attempt lasted all of forty-three seconds before Feuilly rolled his eyes and hauled him into the crook of his arm.

Bossuet had found Mother Hucheloup's Sunday bonnet, the strings of which he was tenderly knotting under Joly's chin. "There," he said, patting his friend's cheek. "All set against the midnight breeze. Now go to sleep like a jolllly good lad, and I'll poke you when it's time for your...eh!... tonic."

Gavroche had beaten them all to the Land of Nod, his small weight abandoned to a pile of hessian sacks, coiled protectively around his gun. "Lamb led to slumber," Courfeyrac laughed, then shrugged. "Here, 'Ferre, tuck him in my jacket, will you? We'll just have to shoo him off before the wolves croak us all."

Combeferre, his eyes set on the outlet of the barricade, stood up.

"Crocus?" Jehan's ear curled a little in his sleep, and Courfeyrac stroked it with the tip of his finger. "No, no, no, _no_. Tell Gisquet all crocuses – unacceptable. My love is a red red rose."

"And my friend is talking poppycock. Hushabye, poet."

"Isn't dice," a muffled voice protested from under a canopy of puce and tangerine velvet. "Is very bad form to bention red doses among the thick, you brude."

"_Bruder_," Feuilly's sigh ricocheted, delivering him to his Utopia of international fraternity, and the rest – beyond the occasional snore or snort – was silence.

Combeferre, in silence, gazed at the loose hieroglyph of legs and arms. It did not take a Champollion to read "closeness" here, and "trust", given and returned, a sunny absolution pressed upon every little fault, every individual nick or flaw, until they were melted into that warm ring of brotherhood. Not even a Rousseau, Combeferre thought as he took his steps to the outpost and its solitary guardian, still as noticeable in his scarlet waistcoat as a redbreast on the prowl. But much too still, Combeferre thought, frowning at the rigid back line, and kicked the nearest pebble pointedly.

Enjolras started at the sound.

"Only me," Combeferre said easily. "I've left the young'uns snug and sleeping."

Enjolras gave an absent nod, half seal of approval, half congé.

Combeferre sidled up to him, letting his shoulder brush against Enjolras's red-coated frame before he leant back against the wall.

"You ought to be with them," he heard next. His friend was staring taut-eyed into the narrow, darkening tunnel that still connected them to the outside world. "What are you doing here?"

Combeferre stared at Enjolras. "Keeping watch."

Enjolras did not speak at once, and when he did, his voice held a touch of hoarseness. "As ever."

In the pulse of understanding that followed, they turned to observe the barricade, now a night sight worthy of _Hoffmann's Tales_ (lying cheek to jowl with Monsieur Champollion on Combeferre's bed, in Combeferre's orphaned little room). A stretch of red cloth still hung at the top of the scaffolding. Enjolras spoke again.

"You won't save me this time. You know it, don't you? That if the worst comes to the worst, and we both know that it has its marching orders, nothing you can do will spare me – a beating?"

They looked at each other, then, as if this was a signal to make good a deep-buried deal between his heart and his arms, Combeferre dismissed the space between them. He felt a shudder, Enjolras's shudder that he knew would never be trusted to anyone else, and, once he deepened the embrace, pressing chests and shoulders together, was given a heart beat to share, hard and excited. Enjolras's heart, unbeaten as of yet.

He pressed his mouth to his friend's temple and said, "Even then, I was given a choice. Spare or share."

The shudder bloomed at the words and Combeferre kissed the temple, twice. He pushed Enjolras's mane of hair back and kissed his hairline, catching the mingled tang of sweat and black powder. But when he tried to move his lips further down, Enjolras flinched back.

"Don't. Please."

"Wha –" Gunpowder, Combeferre told himself, and remembered Le Cabuc. "Oh, for God's sake. You're no Cain, my friend, and you flunked Biblical roleplaying a long long time ago."

"I never realised – I never knew what it does to you, killing a man. Yes, even a murderer. He was close, _close_, when I did it. I told him to pray and he screamed like a pig, then he twitched like one, and he, he – emptied himself out, his brain, his bladder, oh yes, I saw that too, and I made him do all of that. Now I can't unsee it."

"Bullshit." Combeferre kissed his forehead, hard. "Don't slander your retina, man. And don't add injury to insult by keeping us at bay. We're all in this together, Enjolras, all of your friends. We can't afford to have you maroon yourself away from us."

He watched Enjolras's eyes fall shut and waited a few seconds more before touching his mouth to them, one after the other.

"In two hours, we'll kill at your side," he said. "All of us, even little Jehan with his flowerpot ethics. Feuilly, who couldn't flick a fly out of his plate unless it was glued to the jam, and Bossuet, poor devil, bound to shoot his own toes off before he hits anything else. Open your eyes, Enjolras. You're not alone in this."

"What about you," Enjolras said, rubbing furious knuckles across his cheeks.

The dark was everywhere and thickening. Combeferre groped for an answer; found none. "I'll be about my leader's business," he parried, smiling, matching word to gesture as he pulled his leader to him once more. Offering what rest he could before the bells of Saint-Merry began their count of ten with a boom, with an iron clangor that let them know early and exactly what the day had in store for them.

* * *

Enjolras died with his eyes open.

He had thought that death would numb him. It did not – if anything, it did the opposite, filling him with a body of sensations that tore at him and blistered him long before the final pelt of bullets. Grantaire's sacrifice came last, a spoonful of honey after all the stings, and Enjolras felt an almost childish gratitude for it. It took his mind off the rush of visions, hot, corrupt, brilliant and fractured, that strayed like angry bees in the periphery of his eyes even as he faced the National Guard with indifference.

Jehan's cry (_red red rose_). The gleam of silver when he had taken Gavroche from Marius's arms and a brand new five-franc piece had tumbled out of the ragamuffin's shirt (_what sort of a god fills a child's pocket, then sends him to his death?_). Marius with a torch, Marius with a dead young man in his lap. Courefeyrac in his final hour, munching a ginger nut rebelliously (_gingerbread!?_). And many more, until the last, unforgiving sight of Combeferre plucking at his apron convulsively, the linen bunched up in his fists, as three bullets pierced it, and him.

There had been no time to free Combeferre's hands and kiss them, and lay them over his heart. There had been no time to untie the traitorous apron, which had not held back the bullets.

But time had let him take poor Grantaire's hand in the end and do his reckonings: six men in a squad, meaning three bullets each, meaning a death that would reach out to Combeferre's with a little of the intimacy that he had so utterly failed to show the living man. Enjolras began to smile.

Then all the bees gathered, and nailed him to the wall.

* * *

"Open your eyes, Enjolras."

A hand there was, still close, still in touch. But it was passing lightly over his face and neck, pausing to warm his eyes, to reacquaint him with sensation in small bubbles and prickles. Enjolras, whose notions of the afterlife had been staunchly, virtuously, and a-Grantairely uncarnal, blinked in surprise.

"Come, my friend. At the count of three. You were never one to keep the future waiting!"

And here was his Combeferre, his incorruptible spectacles twinkling in a pool of daylight. He no longer wore an apron. In fact, he no longer wore anything like his previous clothes. Combeferre had always dressed formally but without any salient feature, favouring tobacco-brown and spending his so-called salary as an apprenticed surgeon on books and theatre seats. Now he was still wearing a loose-sleeved shirt, but it was of a blue that put every other blue to shame, down to the late Madame Enjolras's famed Indian turquoise, once the talk of Perpignan. And his trousers were – far, far less baggy than –

"Are you my future?" he asked, blushing, and Combeferre rapped out a laugh, blessedly familiar, taking Enjolras's hand to slip it under his arm and conduct him to the window.

"Part of it, hopefully. The rest is outside, waiting for you."

Only then did Enjolras realise that they were no longer in the Corinthe, but in the Café Musain. Or in some version of the Musain – because the old Regency mirror was still there, with its double pane of glass pockmarked by the years, but the chairs and tables looked changed, and instead of Daumier's caricatures of rotund bourgeois, there was a portrait of a half-naked grisette holding up a bottle. The artist, Monsieur Coca (or Cola? He seemed undecided) had signed in the top corner and a flourish of red letters.

Combeferre opened the window. The growl of the street rose to them directly, another well-loved sound, and Enjolras saw a flurry of young people marching down the Boulevard Saint Michel waving flags and placards. Some had bright-coloured flowers in their hair, matching their garb. Most of them seemed to have long hair.

"Just so you know," Combeferre said, smiling, "the ladies are in, now. And you'd better not call them if you want them to take you seriously. It's _les filles_, and no, no offence meant these days."

"There's a red flag!" Enjolras exclaimed, his blood soaring at the view. There were, in fact, several red flags. Combeferre coughed.

"Ah, yes. That. It's Chinese now. Though Feuilly says they really borrowed it from us in the first place. You'll have to ask him, he's our honorary Trotskyst. Little Jehan is with the flower children. Bahorel works at Renault's now. Grantaire, I'm glad to say, went straight to Heaven."

Enjolras frowned.

"So this is not Heaven?"

"We-ell, not quite, though I dare say to you it will soon be. This is a second try. I think. We all killed people, after all. Grantaire mostly tried to kill time."

"You never killed anyone. You wanted to cure pulmonia and invent a horseless omnibus."

"Someone beat me to it," Combeferred said rather forlornly. "But you have no idea how much we've evolved in a hundred years. Blue-jeans! Hoola-hoops! The Fermat theorem! I always said progress was a fact, and - "

"You stayed for me," Enjolras cut in, looking straight at him.

"I can't very well let you enter a stage unsupervised, can I? But the Fermat theorem is really a bonus. And this is a much funnier revolution in many respects. Workers, students, yes, but...remember your speech on love, not war, being tomorrow's goal? That's bang on, man. You might have to do some kissing, though. They don't kill much here, but, dear Lord, they do kiss a lot. Good old Courf' is having the time of his new life."

"Is that what we're fighting for?" Enjolras asked sternly, but his mouth, for the first time since he'd counted rifles in another life, was twitching. "For boys to kiss girls in the open street?"

"We-ell, not quite. According to Philippe Guy, we're also fighting for boys to kiss boys in the open street. Though that might take a tad more time."

"Oh," said Enjolras. He frowned, thinking. Then he nodded to himself, angled his face with his usual nervous precision, and kissed Combeferre decisively. It was a peck of a kiss, and Combeferre winced a little. "Sorry," Enjolras said. He tried again. This time it went better, because Combeferre tilted his own face, making it possible for Enjolras to target his lieutenant's cheeks rather than the branch of his glasses.

Practice did not make him instantly perfect, but his third gave him a taste of Combeferre's lips, and the fourth led to the discovery that Combeferre's neck, much like the man himself, was a pillar of supple strength.

They caught their breaths in each other's arms, both of them needing the contact, the tight have-and-hold, the warmth of reunion.

"You all right?" Combeferre asked quietly after a while.

Enjolras pulled back gently. He adjusted the headband on his curls and stretched his arms, marvelling at the elastic feel of his red jumper. He searched for Combeferre's hand and raised it to his lips.

"All set, comrade. Come, let's go find that Guy guy. And if your brave new day doesn't do it – now we know there's always another time."

FINIS

[A/N : Philippe Guy tried to introduce the rights of homosexuals into the May 68 revolution. He had limited results, but his influence was seminal to the Mouvements de Libérations Homosexuelle that blossomed in the 1970es.]


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